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Salt Experiment

Speaker 1:Hey everybody, I'm Joey. And today we're going to experiment salting these stakes to the ones one day before cooking, one hour before cooking and one minute before cooking. And then we'll test the results. So follow me and let's turn up the taste

Speaker 2:[inaudible]. So the

Speaker 1:first question we need to answer is why we add salt to steaks and really most foods for that matter. Well it's called flavor and you should Google it or maybe you already did and that's how you ended up here. If so, you're right where you need to be. Now there is a lot of money and science dedicated to the investigation, uh, and use of salt and foods and its impact on flavor. I won't dive into all the extensive science behind salt today, but like great scientists before me today. I'm going to do some valuable research for mankind about using salt to create tasty steaks. I like to think of myself as the Tesla of T-bones of meat Addison, if you will, the DaVinci of dummies. As I mentioned, we're salting these stakes to the ones starting with this steak right here, which will be salted one day before cooking.

Speaker 1:This steak will be salted one hour before cooking and this steak one minute before cooking. Now these are thick New York strip steaks, about two inches thick and I have already cut them in half and to a smaller serving size, these are really called like a Casey filet or a Manhattan flays, the technical term for them. If you're looking for some great information about cutting your own steaks. We recently published a video where we took an entire New York top loin and broke it down into these steaks ourselves and there's a tremendous savings, but now we're going to go ahead and start the experiment. All right, so what the first thing I want to do is get this steak on a rack so that air can move all the way around it. The next thing I'm going to do is salt the steak as I mentioned, and I really want to isolate the impact of the salt.

Speaker 1:So I am going to use a half tablespoon of salt on all the steaks to season them. It gives me a nice consistent measurement. And that way I'll know that the salt, the amount of the salt itself is not impacting the flavor. So salting steak, it's pretty easy, you know, just get it on there, you know, and you're always gonna need a little bit more salt than you think. This is a thick steak. So go ahead and really get it all around. Um, I like to kind of get it on all sides, not just the top or bottom, you know, let's go ahead and get it all the way. I do go a little lighter on the sides now let's go ahead and just finish it off. Um, and today we are using, uh, kosher salt, which, uh, I think is a pretty common salt used for seasoning steaks, but we're actually working on a video where we experiment with different types of salt. We look forward to sharing that with you as well. Now let's get this in the fridge and I'll be back in 24 hours.

Speaker 2:[inaudible]

Speaker 1:okay, I'm back. All right, it's been 24 hours. The steak has been sitting in the refrigerator, totally uncovered. And let's just talk about the differences here. As we can see, it already has a much darker color then our steaks, which have been refrigerated overnight. So these were wrapped up. We put them back in the fridge. This has been sitting out uncovered and look at that. It also has a much dryer texture, can see the imprints from the bottom of the rack right here. So, um, I'm really excited to see how this turns out. I've, I've never tried anything like this before. So, um, before we can try this, the next thing we need to do is get this steak salted for one hour prior to cooking. So let's go ahead and get that done here. I've weighed out, uh, not weighed but measured another half a tablespoon of salt. Again, I am keeping this consistent across all stakes, so let's just get assaulted.

Speaker 2:[inaudible]

Speaker 1:okay, great. Now that that's done, um, we're going to let all these steaks rest uncovered for one hour to let them, you know, rise up to room temperature. When I come back, I'm going to go ahead and salt this final steak right before I put it on the skillet. Now for anyone who's watched these videos before, you know we have a little bit of time to kill here. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to grab my beer. I love to search for conspiracy theories online and today I'm doing some research to see if guy theory really can take us down to flavor town. I have some pretty solid evidence. It's a hoax, but back to the research

Speaker 2:[inaudible].

Speaker 1:Okay, so it's been an hour. And um, I just really want to talk about again, the differences in between the three States. So again, I already talked about the one that's been in the fridge overnight and can see the dark color, the dryness. Very interesting. This has taken on a much different color too as well. Not quite as dark as our one that's been salted one day. But as you can see, it's a little darker color than the one that hasn't been salted at all, but they've both been sitting out for one hour. Matter of fact, they all have. So, okay, so now that these are salted, today we're using the reverse sear method, so I'm going to go ahead and get these on the rack and I just want to put them on the rack and the exact same order left to right one day, one hour, and one minute.

Speaker 1:Next thing we're going to do is we're going to get these things in the oven, which has already been preheated 250 degrees. The total cook time should take about 30 minutes. Now, 30 minutes is just a barometer. We're not cooking to time. We're always cooking to internal temperature. Okay? So I said right before I put these in the oven, if they might take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes, well they, these are very thick steaks and they did take 45 minutes to reach an internal temperature of 130 now I'm heating this cast iron skillet. It's getting nice and hot. It's going to take about two minutes. And while we're waiting for that, I just want to talk about, you know, time and temperature. We get a lot of questions about what's the right length of time or what's the right ambient temperature to cook, whether it's in the oven or on the grill.

Speaker 1:And yes, those things do have some important, but the ones your way that you can turn up the tasty in your home every single time you've cooked is with an instant read thermometer. Um, we published a short video on why that's important and you can go check that out, learn a little bit more. We do suggest that you have one. Um, because you know, cooking time isn't, it's not a perfect science. There's a lot of factors that can impact the outcome. Next, I just want to talk a little bit about these steaks. What I'm seeing here. So over here we have the sake that assaulted the night before very firm, just like it kind of was when we pulled it out of the refrigerator. Um, this one has a typical state feel as does this one. But the one thing that I really want to bring your attention to is that the steak that was salted one minute before it went in the oven, you can still see that that a salt sitting on top of the steak, whereas the other two have really absorbed it.

Speaker 1:The one distinction I want to make about the salt is around the fat cap. So again, we cut these from a New York strip steak and as such they all have a little bit of a fat cap. The salt is still very visible and all of those fad caps is, it did not. I guess it cannot, you know, permeate that fat. So just wanted to bring that to your attention here. We got this pan getting nice and hot. Okay. It's been warmed up now for a few minutes. So what we're gonna do is we're just going to sear these on each side for about 45 seconds. They're already fully cooked with the reverse sear method here we have a little avocado oil. We're using this because it has a very high smoking point. We get into oils in a another video. You can really use canola, uh, avocado is we're using here canola oil or whatever you might have around the house that has a really high smoke point. Let's get this in. Next, we're going to turn up the heat and we're going to get this blazing hot

Speaker 2:[inaudible].

Speaker 1:Again, I know that I can add butter and time and normally I would add that after I flipped. But again, I really just want to isolate the impact, the salting process and not introduce a bunch of new flavors.

Speaker 2:Okay.

Speaker 1:They're seared their cook and now it's time for my favorite part at taste tests or I do, I just want to talk about the coloring afterwards. Candidly, there's very little difference I see in the type of sear. Um, there is a difference in feel that just translates to how it came out of the fridge. But um, they are all very similar. I would say that our one day and our one hour steak have a little bit more of a mahogany color. A little, it appears like a little bit crispier exterior then our one minute. But I would say that any difference is really negligible. But with no further ado

Speaker 2:[inaudible].

Speaker 1:All right, look at that. Perfectly cooked medium rare. That's the outcome we'd expect with the reverse sear method. That's part of the reason we do it is those consistent results. Here we have the one hour steak. Again, very, very similar to it's a brother steak right over here and here we have the one day steak. This had just a little bit more thickness, maybe a quarter inch. Let's see if that made any difference on the final cook. All right, so now that we cut it open, I didn't think that there was a lot of difference in the crust prior to cutting it open, but I want to bring your attention to this right here. So on her it appears like the crust is almost like a little thicker as we move down the timing guidelines. So here's a one minute. You can see it's just this little thin exterior right here at the top over there. That's fat cap. It's a little harder to see on the bottom, but it is there. It's a nice clear shot up at top. It's the one minute it gets a little thicker, at least appears to my eye to get a little bit thicker over here on the one hour. And we can, I think really see the difference over here on the one day. Look at that. You can see it all the way around. So that's interesting. I just wanted to point that out and uh, we'll see how it impacts the overall flavor here.

Speaker 1:Steak is cooked. It's very tender cooked to perfection. The first thing you get is, you know the salt on the exterior of the steak. Really rough row. Um, you can really, uh, taste it right as it hits your palate. It's harder to taste that salt as we get into the thicker part of the meat. Let's move over here to our one hour

Speaker 2:[inaudible]

Speaker 1:wow, great steak, fantastic steak. The one note thing I noticed about this that's different from this. This had a saltier taste once it hit my palate, as I mentioned, this has a little bit more of a subdued salt taste that kind of really begins to run through the meat. And I did see and we did point out that that meat, that that salt salt had kind of absorbed into the meat for lack of a better way to say it and you really tasting that as we bite in. I mean that's just so good. I have to have another bite. I know it's going to slow down the taste test.

Speaker 2:That's [inaudible].

Speaker 1:That salt as it permeates

Speaker 2:also seems to be out as subtle, a little bit of a richer, beefier flavor than our one minute. Now over here to the one day, like I said, it felt a little hard when it came out of the fridge at least harder than those two do did, but let's see what impact it has on flavor. Wow, great steak.

Speaker 1:That drying out process that happened in the fridge. I think what I'm, I'm kind of tasting here is an increased sort of richness and beefy flavor. I also noticed too that this steak here is just the ever slightest bit more tender than its counterparts. Again, I've got to go in for another bite. This is so good guys. You've got to try this experiment at home. Find out for yourself. Definitely, absolutely more tender than that steak. That's an interesting outcome. Not one that I was expecting. Same, same with this steak though. Um, this has less of an impact on the salt as it hits your palate and uh, really sorta has to seem to have kind of moved through the meats. You're getting that on every bite. Look, I've always salted my steaks right before I put them on, uh, the grill or in the oven or on the skillet.

Speaker 1:But I have to say the results of this test I think really change it for me. I've got to say, guys, I think I'm going to be salting at least an hour from now on and when I can, um, the day before, I don't know that the impact between this and this is so great that I would need to do this every time. But if I do have the time and if I kind of think about it beforehand, this is absolutely something I will be doing. Look, if you like this video, please give us a thumbs up. Like, or even better. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for future updates. Not only will you get future updates about cooking meat made easy, which is what we strive to show you in every single video, but candidly, your subscription and like goes much farther than you would know in supporting this channel so that we can keep on cooking meat made easy. But you know, look, don't take my word for it. I want you guys to try this at home. Let me give you a bike.